Author: James Qu

Textures are something every Photoshopper loves – great texture mean great design outcome. Plus you can combine different image adjustment tool to those textures to create unique, eye-catching effect.

In this post, I will share my collection 80+ of High Quality Free Variety Texture (Packs) for Your Next Design. Those are excellent textures I collected in the past and I personally think they’re absolutely great. The texture packs range from abstract, natural, metal to grunge. Hope you enjoy them :)

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really cool-looking, Splashing Ocean Text Effect with Lightning Background in Photoshop. Have a try :)

Along the way, we will be using lots of textures, image adjustments, blending options and various filters. The purpose is to show you how you can use multiple texture images and combine them to create dramatic effect.

Previously I published a post named “5 Useful Little Photoshop Tricks to Add Extra Elegance For Your Design” and it turns out to be quite a popular tutorial here. (Had about 35,000 hits so far). So I guess you guys (especially Photoshop beginners) would probably like another similar post. So here we go :)

In this post, I will show you yet another 5 Interesting Little Photoshop Tricks to Add Extra Elegance to Your Design. These techniques are just little things that I found useful in Photoshop, and I think they’re quite beneficial to learn if you’re a PS beginner. So go ahead and have a try!

I love space artworks – mainly because there is alway certain degree of mystery in them. After all, that’s a place far beyond our reach and most of us will never get to experience the real space.

Photoshop, on the other hand, give us the freedom to put our imagination into some sort of “reality”. By using Photoshop, we’re able to transform our thoughts about how space would look into digital artworks. And also we can combine different types of space element into our design and create surreal, fantasy effect with them.

In this post, I put in 100+ Brilliant Space Photoshop Brushes to Beautify Your Design + 6 Amazing Space Artworks to Inspire You as a designer. Hopefully you will find them useful and give you some inspiration towards your design.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Welcome to the 17th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run regularly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

In this post, I will show 25 Beautiful, Absolutely Magical Traditional Art Fantasy Drawings as a source of your inspiration. Some of them are done in watercolor and some of them are pencil drawing. Nonetheless they look amazing! Hope you enjoy them!

In this tutorial, I will show the steps I took to create this Grungy Style Artwork, Mixing with Great Lighting and Shattered Effect in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level tutorial and some steps can be tricky, but why not just have a try :)

We’re are almost into the year of 2010! In this post, I will showcase my collection of 25 Absolutely Beautiful Artworks Featuring Year 2010, hopefully they will inspire you and give a boost to your new year spirit!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really great looking, space-themed “Unleash Your Creativity” Artwork in Photoshop. Have a try!

The point I would like to address in this tutorial is how we can achieve great lighting effect by simply mixing custom brushset and various Photoshop filters, plus we will be exploring different layer blending effects and the use of Pen Tool to create abstract lines. I will also show you how to quickly render realistic star field effect in Photoshop.

In this post, I will share with you 25 really cool, high-res abstract style Photoshop brush sets I have in my bookmarks for your next design project. Hope you like them and find them useful :)

Personally I love those abstract style brushset because I found them quite useful when you want to add a bit of finishing touches to spice up the image. Mixing them with colors and filters, you can produce very nice effects for your image.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Welcome to the 16th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run regularly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

If you like those works, then show those awesome designers some support! Click on the image to visit the author’s flickr page and drop them a comment :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really great-looking, abstract style text effect by using custom brushset (which we will be making one of our own) with dynamics, plus adding artistic effect with Photoshop filters. It’s a simple tutorial however the end result looks great, have a try!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really awesome looking, dark flaming hell scene in Photoshop, inspired by the Dante’s Inferno game artworks. This tutorial is designed for intermediate to advance Photoshop users so some steps can be a bit tricky, but why not have a try!

Along the way, we will be using tons of layer blending techniques, filter effects, image adjustments, and various tools from the toolbox. You will learn how to combine those techniques into one and make awesome looking artwork in Photoshop.

In this post, I will show you 35 amazingly beautiful, ultra-creative Photo Manipulated wallpaper I collected and stored in my browser favourites. They’re some of the best ones I have come across and I have to say the skills used in making those wallpaper are simply first-class. Really Really good.

Hope you enjoy them and make your desktop a vibrant place :)

Please click on individual photo to download them from their original sources.

I guess this is the ultimate issue every designer (no matter whether you’re a freelancer or not) will have to face eventually – to deal with the time when your creative awesomeness, once your greatest asset, disappears into the thin air without a trace.

You may sit in front of your computer and try your best to regain your power, but you find no matter what you do, you just can’t see that light at the end of the tunnel. And if your project/assignment deadline is something like, umm, tomorrow… well, that’s it mate. End of story.

This brings us back to this question: How to Deal With Creativity Dry Up? What Would You Do if Lacking of Inspiration? What’s YOUR best way of regaining creativity?

In this tutorial, I will show you the process I took to create this rather cute, unique Style “Play” Button in Photoshop. It’s a simple (aimed for PS beginners) but fun tutorial, have a try :)

The primary goal for this tut is to show you the functionalities behind the draw tools, selection tool and the use of layer blending options. I also added my own design ideas to make this play button a bit unique. Hope you enjoy it!

Time to offer my dear PSD Vault reader some freebies again! This time, I made a sparkling, watercolour-styled Hot Girl wallpaper to spice up your desktop and iPhone (if you have one) !

Recently I have been experimenting some filter effects and custom brush effects in Photoshop and this is what I came up with. I though perhaps mixing those two techniques would probably produce some nice effect, and I have fairly pleased with the result.

Any that’s enough talk, hope you enjoy this wallpaper!

In my opinion, drawing effect has always been a vital part of Photoshop. The various tools and filters available in Photoshop provides designers pretty much endless possibility of creating realistic drawing effect. The good thing is to create those effect is not that difficult and everyone can do it – providing you put in some effort practicing :)

In this post, I will showcase you 10 excellent Photoshop Tutorials that I think can give you a boost to your drawing skills. I have personally tried out them in the past and I think the quality of them are quite good, and should give you lot of tips and tricks into the Photoshop drawing world.

For your convenience, I categorise those tutorials into three difficulty levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced.

Here goes the list, enjoy!